Effective Searching - involves creating search strings which include your keywords as well as tools to assist with joining the concepts together
Search String – what you put into the databases, the keywords and concepts with the connectors such as And, Or, or Not (Boolean operators). They work like order of operations like a math equation; telling the computer what to do in what order.
Boolean: And, Or, Not
o And – narrows and joins the terms
o OR – expands – synonyms
o Not – eliminates
Example: "sustance abuse" OR "subtance use" AND crime
“Phrase Searching” – use to join two or more words in a phrase: “intimate partner violence”
Truncation and Wildcards
o Wildcard ne?t neat, next, nest
o Wildcard col#r color, colour
o Truncation sampl* sample, sampling
Refining: Expanding/Narrowing/Clarifying:
Ways to LIMIT search to articles satisfying your need: Ways to EXPAND your search if not sufficient quantity of results
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Format: Full-text available Reminder: caveat about need, since scanning paper journals and ILL are options |
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Subject Terms: Use better keywords that you identify from resources that are most relevant to your research question |
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Peer-reviewed or scholarly journal |
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Works Cited Lists from articles and dissertations can also be a good source of identifying additional articles |
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Dates: Current and up-to-date? Depends on project, but for ones in this class, only want/need articles published in last 5-10 years |
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Take database suggestions for similar articles, if their title and/or abstract was relevant to your research need |
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United States focused: Justice Systems around world are very different, unless project requires international focus |
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Remove filters/limiters to include non-full-text articles and include older dates |
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Use better keywords that you identify from items you find that are most relevant |
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See other suggestions from textbook appendix and others |
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